Dear Isabel:

You are welcome and feel free to post anytime you want to. I wanted to add something that I had in mind ever since I submitted my Dec 11 long post to you. It’s in regard to the imposter syndrome that you mentioned (“I definitely have imposter syndrome”).

A false, untrue core belief was formed in you as a result of this: “I was always accused of stuff that I hadn’t done and toughly disciplined when I made mistakes.  I remember finding some money in a purse at school and spending it on sweets…”. The untrue core belief is that you are a bad person (“I am such a bad person”). This untrue core belief carried from your childhood to your adulthood.

And so (correct me if I am wrong): whenever you feel like a good person, whenever you catch yourself/notice that you are doing something nice and loving for people, and feeling good about it, you think something like this: wait, wait…I am not a good person, I must be faking it!

One more thing in regard to what you wrote today regarding the work colleague: “I was looking for comfort at the time and I found it in someone who had respect for me and saw the good in me… I did feel amazing I had a skip in my step I was buzzing at life“- reading this made me think/ feel that your husband does not respect you enough, that he respects you very conditionally perhaps, very limitedly, and that he does not adequately see you as a good person. And because of this lack, this suffocation (in addition to the lockdown), when you felt respected and being seen as a good person by another man, it felt like a breath of fresh air, skipping and buzzing in new-found air!

anita